Dead Medium:

Not Your Average Ghost Story

By Peter John

Author of

Peter John was born in Bromley Kent, England in 1973. He gained an interest in creative writing at the age of 14 and was published during the 1990's in several poetry anthologies. Happily Married to Jo since 1996 and currently living in Sidcup Kent, not so far from the tree.

I was born
in Bromley, Kent back in the early seventies. I spent most of my
childhood riding bikes, playing tag and kicking tin cans around the
street, unless there was an actual football to hand. At the age of
fourteen I had a milestone experience. Prior to that I had never
shown the slightest interest in writing, if I remember rightly I
wanted to be an astronaut, but then I got put into detention one
afternoon. I had failed to bring in my homework assignment and the
teacher had punished me by forcing me to write a short story during
the lunch time break. While all the other boys kicked tin cans around
the playground, I was sat in a room on my own with a sandwich, a
carton of Kia-Ora and an exercise book. I picked at the sandwich
while staring at the blank pages in front of me and then it happened.
All of a sudden a story formed in my head and I almost instinctively
threw in down on the paper. 45 minutes passed in what felt like
seconds and the short story which I had called ’Thinking Crash’
was spread throughout the exercise book in my scruffy, barely
coherent handwriting. I had never fallen into a story like that
before, where my hand was struggling to keep up with my brain and I
didn’t look up once from the pages until I heard the lunch bell
ring. Ever since that day I have been hooked. I could have been
circling the earth in a tin can and eating my dinner out of a tube if
it wasn’t for that one stint in detention; I still like to consider
it as a lucky escape.

OPINIONS
OF GHOSTS

You
would expect me, being the author of a paranormal comedy, to be a
great believer in ghosts but you would be wrong in that assumption.
You would then presume that I have never seen a ghost and again you
would be mistaken, confused yet? I consider myself to be a hopeful
sceptic; hopeful because I would really
like to be able to break free of my own Cynicism and a sceptic
because no matter how hard I try, I can’t. Even after seeing things
that I can’t explain myself, I fail to convert myself into a
believer on the basis that just because I can’t prove it false
doesn’t mean it’s true. I regret this standpoint entirely, I see
all the benefits in believing in something as strongly as some people
believe in the existence of ghosts and other forms of supernatural
beings but I don’t seem capable of stepping over that final hurdle
of doubt, and I blame psychics for this entirely. Years of hearing
how people have been fleeced for more money than they can comfortably
afford by Clairvoyants and Mediums has left me armoured
against certain aspects of the supernatural. Con artists and schemers
who have promised them answers to the soul burning questions that we
all ask of ourselves during times of grief. Is there more? Are they
truly gone or are they just behind the curtain of death, waiting for
me to join them? Are they watching over me, right here, as we speak
My mother is a great believer in the spiritual powers of others and
has often remarked on her own psychic ability. I have to agree that
on occasion she has made remarkable predictions that have turned out
to be true, though sometimes it has been in a ‘ball park’ kind of
way. Through out my childhood I have listened to her stories about
what this medium said and what that psychic told her but I have also
listened to the recording of such spiritual meetings. “I have a
name coming through. It’s faint but I think it begins with an A, it
might be an O or an E. It’s definitely starts with a vowel or
there’s a vowel in there somewhere at least.” My mother never
failed to fall hook line and sinker but, even at a young age, I could
see the vague and fishing manner in which they all spoke. It made me
cynical and suspicious when it came down to
beings from another plain of existence and I have yet failed to shrug
this guarded approach. Maybe one day I will find the proof I need, or
experience something that will turn my head a full 360 until I’m
sceptical about whether living people
actually exist, but until that day I will remain full of questions,
doubts and hopes.